


The Basement Job

by flickerface



Category: Leverage, Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Post-Finale, Post-Series, spoilers through PoI finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-18 00:21:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7292077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flickerface/pseuds/flickerface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six months after the PoI finale, the Leverage crew encounters a stranger. It's a funny coincidence--but then, very little is coincidence where Shaw and her ASI are concerned. (Spoilers for all of PoI and Leverage.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Basement Job

It's been six months since the Ice-Nine virus crisis, six months of things slowly—finally—getting back to normal, not just before the crisis but before the past two years of steady increases in firewalls Hardison couldn't hack, information Hardison couldn't fake, and marks simply vanishing halfway through the team's cons.

The first time that last happened, they stayed awake five days straight looking for the Black Book mark who'd been enmeshed in a business deal to buy shoddy airplane parts. By the fifteenth, their attempts to track down the missing marks mostly involved Parker and Eliot talking Hardison out of his despair.

But somehow, something changed. They haven't had anyone vanish in months, which was almost more unsettling at first, but they've started to relax. Even Parker's started to relax. Hardison lets his search protocols for the missing people run without checking on them more than twice a day. And, after a lengthy discussion, they came to New York City to track down a dozen of the last Black Book names.

Which is why Parker is sneaking into a Wall Street building late at night when she sees the glass office that's her target still lit, and freezes. "Hardison?" she mutters over the coms. "I thought you said the place was empty."

"I did!" Hardison's indignant. "You don't trust me, woman? After all we've been though?"

Parker tunes out the rest of his speech and slides forward. It's not someone working late—it's someone tossing that office, rapidly, methodically. She's in all black, her brown hair in a practical ponytail, her motions all efficiency. She's not even bothering to hide from the cameras so there must be a hacker somewhere behind her, too, unless this is there's something extremely valuable hidden in that office and this is just a simple theft. But that office belongs to their mark, and Hardison tracked down all his valuables to his safety deposit boxes and his money to his off-shore accounts.

So there's a hacker, and Parker wasn't being careful about cameras either, so the other hacker's probably seen her too. The time for subtlety is over.

Parker makes it to the office door in three point five seconds flat, taser out, and then she's on the floor with the stranger's forearm on her throat and her face six inches from Parker's. There isn't intervening time in Parker's memory. It just—happened.

"Parker! Baby! Are you all right? Are you?" Hardison's yelping in her ear.

"Eight seconds," Eliot growls.

Eight seconds is a long time to try to catch your breath, with a stranger looming above you, their weight against your sternum. Parker would be unconscious or dead if the stranger wanted her to be, that's clear, from the glint in her eyes and the strength in her arm. But there's a listening cast to her head, too. Parker cranes to see the stranger's other ear and gets pressed harder into the floor for her pains, but not before she catches a glimpse of a com nestled in her ear.

Eliot comes through the office door in a shower of glass. The stranger rises up off Parker, who rolls away, coughing and curling up to protect her tender throat. Eliot will want her out of the way for this fight.

But maybe there isn't a fight. It's awfully quiet behind her.

Parker uncurls.

Eliot and the stranger have almost exactly the same stance. They are both perfectly still. The stranger has a gun, but for all the attention either pays to it, it might as well not exist.

"Spencer," the stranger says. Her gaze is very level. She might as well have forgotten Parker's there, but Parker is fairly certain she's marking every motion in the room.

"Hardison," Parker says quietly. "I think it's all right." Fortunately, that gets through. He shuts up. For once there's quiet on the coms. And then there's another voice: a woman's voice.

"Well, I have to say I didn't expect this." She's warm, amused, sharp. "And there's very little takes me by surprise these days. Alec Hardison, Parker—it's nice to finally meet you. Eliot Spencer."

Eliot gives a twitch of a nod.

Hardison says, "These coms are protected. What do you—"

"You can call me Root. This is Shaw." The voice is even warmer on that name. "Shaw, meet Leverage International."

Shaw's eyes narrow. Eliot shrugs. He relaxes deliberately. "You want to tell us what's going on?" He's addressing the other hacker.

"It's kind of a long story," she says. "Right now, you all need to get out of there. The night watch is coming through in five minutes."

Parker had planned to hide behind the desk with the lights off when the watch came through, but with the office door broken and bits of glass still in Eliot's hair, she can see the point in that.

"You were looking for the proof that he's defrauding the company," Parker says. Shaw's attention transfers to her. "Third drawer down, false bottom. That's where I'd hide it."

Shaw steps back with an ironic flourish. Parker moves past her, trusting Eliot to watch her back. She opens the drawer, finds the fake bottom, and pulls out the papers. "We just need to scan them. You can keep them."

"Let's discuss this outside," Shaw says shortly.

Parker, Eliot, and Shaw move silently through the cubicles. They're almost to the stairwell when the night watch comes up from the other side of the floor. As one, they duck, and Hardison says, "Bad news, momma." Parker can see Shaw's eyebrow raise at the pet name. "Ground floor's going to be swarming with security soon as that nice man sees the broken glass. Not sure the three of you can get out in time."

"I thought you said _bad_ news," Parker whispers back, and leads Eliot and Shaw into the stairwell. "Okay, we're taking the roof way out."

Shaw's not paying attention. She whistles, the noise echoing piercingly off the concrete stairs, and a dog comes loping up to meet them. It's almost as high as Parker's waist, brown and black, with body language just as fierce as Shaw's until it reaches her and licks her hand.

For some weird reason, this is what makes Eliot actually relax. Parker leans over to him. "You can't trust _everyone_ that kids and dogs like," she mutters, poking him in the arm.

Eliot bats her hand away. "Plan B," he says. "Dog's not going off the roof."

"Fine," Hardison says, "but don't ever say I never get you nothing. Root? We're going to need a distraction."

"Coming up," Root says, sounding pleased.

The dog goes down first, Shaw next, followed by Parker. Eliot covers their rear. Halfway to the ground floor, the fire alarms go off. "Dammit, Hardison," Eliot says, and they all increase their pace to a jog. They ignore the fire gate, heading to the basement, where security hasn't gotten yet. It's a maze of concrete and pipes, fuzzing out their coms at times.

"You and your hacker," Parker says, "Root. Do you do what we do?"

Shaw doesn't slow down. "I don't know, what do you do?" She doesn't really sound interested.

"We provide leverage." It hasn't gotten old yet, even four years later. "Rich people take advantage of the system, scam innocent people—there isn't any way they can fight back, no legal ways anyway."

Shaw turns on her. They're in a tunnel, cement walls, pipes running the length of one side. Parker hasn't heard Hardison or Root on coms for at least a minute. Eliot's around the corner, making sure that no one's following.

"And then what?" Her voice is soft. "You kill them?"

"No. No!" Parker puts her fists on her hips. "Okay, there was that one time Nate almost killed someone, but he didn't. Mostly."

"Spencer kills people." Her gaze flickers to the corner.

"Eliot _used_ to kill people. Now we help them. We scam the rich people right back, trick them into giving us their money, or we set them up for a fall so they'll embarrass themselves."

Shaw still looks dubious.

Parker twists the problem in her head like a con, watches the pieces click into place. "Is this about the disappearances?"

Like a plucked string, Shaw goes tense.

"These past two years," Parker says, "we kept tracking down marks, rich people, bad people, who'd do anything for a profit. We were going to expose them, get them fired maybe, steal their off-shore funds to reimburse the people they'd bankrupted. Some of them we were just ready to tip off the IRS to their real income, so they'd get taxed and some of it would go back to regular people or infrastructure, anyway. And then they'd vanish."

Shaw lets out a long breath.

"It kept happening." Parker keeps a close eye on Shaw. "And then, six months ago, it stopped."

"We don't do the same thing," Shaw says abruptly.

Parker is intensely aware of their isolation. If Shaw and Root are behind the disappearances themselves—

"But it sounds like we had a common enemy." That might be a quirk of a smile. She slaps her thigh, calls a soft command. The dog trots back from scouting. "Let's keep moving."

By the time all three of them—and the dog—emerge into an alley, the cool night air refreshing after the stale air of the tunnels, Parker has far more questions than answers.

"Parker. Eliot." Hardison's voice is serious. "This is a private channel—there's something you need to—"

Hardison's cut off by Root. "Please. Let me say it myself. I'm an artificial super-intelligence."

Eliot frowns. Parker says quietly, "I _knew_ it." Eliot had laughed at that theory. Hardison had too, at times, and then they had all gotten so worn down by the disappearances that they hadn't had any energy to pursue it.

"What about aliens?" Parker asks Shaw, who just shakes her head, but like she's tired, not like she means 'no'. "Are there aliens?"

"Am I supposed to work with these people now?" Shaw asks the air—no, asks the artificial super-intelligence. "Because I'm not sure I can do it."

"Aww, c'mon sweetie," the AI says in all their ears. "It won't be so bad. You got used to me."

"They're doing Samaritan's work. All right, not for Samaritan, and they aren't killing people, but—"

"Hey hey hey, hold on," Hardison says, "there's more than one AI?"

Everyone ignores him.

"Shaw, honey, they need another person for their next job. After that you don't have to work with them anymore, promise. You can go right back to kneecapping people in the service of preventing murders, not that I really _need_ you to do that. I have other teams now too, remember?"

"I know," Shaw says. There's something complicated in her face, in tiny ways: something about the corners of her eyes, the set of her lips. "Okay. What's this job?" She looks at Parker.

Who's nonplussed. "We don't have a next job."

"You do now," Root says, silky-smooth. "I'm hiring Leverage."

"So when you said that about not expecting us," Hardison says on coms, "that would be what you might call a lie?"

"Something like that." Root sounds pleased with herself. "I need your expertise. And you'll need Shaw."

Parker looks Shaw over, skeptically, and catches Shaw doing the same evaluation of her. At least Shaw's figured out who runs the crew. Plenty of folks assume it's Eliot at first.

"Come on, play nice. I know you can do it." Root must add something just in Shaw's ear, because Shaw almost cracks a smile.

"All right," Eliot says, "what's this next job?"

"It better not involve guns," Hardison mutters.

Parker says, "Tell me everything."


End file.
